South Park creator Matt Stone is laughing off reports he has been targeted by Scientology officials following the controversial 2005 Tom Cruise episode, insisting the church bosses are perfectly happy about the scandal.

The Trapped In The Closet episode poked fun at Cruise's sexuality and his involvement with the Church of Scientology, but despite media claims Stone and partner Trey Parker have been hounded by church officials, the animators have heard nothing.

Stone doesn't even agree with reports the Scientologists were behind the decision to pull a repeat of the episode from airing on US cable network Comedy Central.

He says, "I think Scientology has this reputation for intimidating people and, you know, throwing dead animals over your fence and putting notes on your cars and bricks through your windows. I think it's all bulls**t. I think the press has made that monster. I think Scientology enjoys that reputation because it keeps everyone from doing anything about it. Since we've done the episode, we haven't had any contact from them at all."

Church-Going Producer Urged Animators To Attack Reeve

South Park creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone wrestled with an idea to poke fun at late paraplegic actor Christopher Reeve on their irreverent cartoon show for a year - before their church-going producer urged them to go ahead.

The duo feared they would be going too far if they featured an animated Reeve sucking the stem cells out of fetuses in an episode of South Park, and ditched the idea.

But, when their Christian producer learned about the sick idea, she urged the animators to shoot the episode.

Parker recalls, "For a long time we're like, 'Maybe that's not cool.' So we actually went through a whole season not doing it. The next season we were out of idea and we're like, 'We've got the Christopher Reeve sucking stem cells idea, but that's really too brutal.' It just so happened that he was on (CNN show) Larry King Live that night, and our producer, who is, like, our sounding board because she goes to church every Sunday morning, was like, 'You know what? F**k him.' He really was taking up this cause of, 'Everyone needs to help me out.' Right before he died, I think he started going a little crazy, but he started getting really weird about it (stem-cell research)."

Lots of great pictures from South Park episodes HERE.

(This news article provided by World Entertainment News Network)